Chapter 13
Wayne wasn’t surprised to see the rail road tracks heading forward looked normal.
High quality metals, graded tracks, and what looked like maintenance done often and repeatedly.
Along the interior of the tunnel were a large number of automated defenses, cameras, yet no security emplacements. Whoever this was, was entirely expecting their automated systems to handle the situation.
Given that he saw some laser weapon emplacements that looked different than he personally knew, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were devastating. It reminded him of books and movies of an unknown organization having tech that was ahead of the curve.
“Dagger, I want you to strip everything from here when we’re done,” Wayne ordered. “If you have to commandeer other systems, computers, or AI, I’m authorizing it.”
“Yes,” answered Arsenic in a clipped tone. She was clearly busy.
I’ll need to sit in a Titan or something nasty and just let her run cycles from it. Something with a lot of juice.
Right now she’s more or less cobbling things together by a system of systems that aren’t her, and working through them inefficiently.
It’s a shame, but she’s shackled to my mind and unless I give her a tool, she’s limited.
The tunnel opened up into a wide and open area. It was clearly a train depot given there was cranes and loading platforms at roughly what you’d expect for train cars.
Wayne was somewhat confused, though.
Moving trains, even electric high-end ones, was still a noisy business. People would’ve noticed the noises of a train clattering along the tracks. Or the cars clanking against one another with any shift in speed or a turn.
They would’ve also noticed the trains moving along tracks that people would normally think are completely in disrepair. There’s no chance at all that it wouldn’t have been noted by the population, let alone reported on.
There was more to this but Wayne didn’t think he’d figure it out.
The only answer he could give it for the time being was that whoever was in charge was exerting a lot of power and control. All to keep this quiet and out of view.
Cara turned to the right and stepped up onto a platform and began trundling toward wall with a number of doorways on it.
One in particular caught his eye and had clearly captured Cara’s attention. A large doorway that looked to be explicitly for large objects to pass through. It had a set of double doors that looked like they could be locked or propped open.
Clearly it was some type of freight entry given the size of it and the location was a straight line from the end point of all the loading platforms.
With what Arsenic had warned him about, he was indeed glad he was in a Light Walker. Even if it felt strange, that it wasn’t a normal cockpit layout, and was far more similar to an exo-suit, he’d deal with it.
There was no way a Combat Walker would’ve fit through the normal doorways he’d seen. Even this Scout Walker would need to go sideways, squirm, and probably break the doorway going through it.
But they’d be able to go through it.
Cara pushed through the double doors without trying to open them. Letting the bulk of the Walker tear them clean off and she just kept moving.
Once she’d cleared the doorway, Wayne’s night vision lit up with flashing lights followed instantly by the rapid fire boom of her multi-machine guns.
Whatever was in front of her required a barrage of bullets and violence.
The burst of machine-gun fire from Cara only lasted five or so seconds and neither she nor Wayne stopped moving. They kept walking down the wide hall all the while.
Eventually Wayne saw what Cara had been firing on.
A security checkpoint with ten or so people behind concrete barriers with gun slits built into the walls themselves. It was still wide enough for a palette mover to squeeze through, but that was about it.
There was also a metal detector built into the ceiling and floor that would’ve gone off violently as Cara squeezed through the passage. One of the feet of her Walker landing on a woman squirming on the ground’s chest.
It crushed her outright and splintered her ribcage into what Wayne imagined was a birds nest. A bunch of sticks and twigs roughly organized into a circle.
“Path split,” Cara declared in what sounded a lot like a curse to Wayne.
“Dagger, any preference?” Wayne asked.
Arsenic was silent.
“Pick a door Warrior, I’ll take the other,” Wayne ordered. They didn’t have time to stand around and discuss it. They needed to keep moving before whatever defenses were here countered Arsenic.
Suddenly the lights turned on and Wayne had a flash of nothing but blinding green and white. Followed immediately by the bright lights getting shut back off.
Shaking his head, Wayne found himself standing beside Cara in front of three doors.
One went to the left, one straight ahead, and one to the right.
“Take left, I’ll take right, come back to this point when you’re done,” ordered Wayne, his eyes felt deeply unhappy with the lights turning on and off as they did.
He imagined the facility manager or defenders were trying to fight off Arsenic. Part of that fight was almost certainly them battling for power to everything.
“Aye,” growled Cara who turned to the left. “I want to get in a bed after this. It is aggravating that I am not as a perfect Handfast as I thought. Lance achieved something I desire.”
“Earn it,” countered Wayne. As much as he wanted to play ‘make the Dashi scream in passion’ he had work to do. Finding a bed after this mission sounded like a costly luxury.
Turning, Wayne pushed the door open, went sideways, bent low, and crammed his Walker through it. Taking the door right off the hinges as he did it as his small-missile pod caught it.
Despite being a very small Walker, it was still a Walker.
A large weapon of war that could take on a great many military resources and destroy them.
Standing upright Wayne had a sensor go off a moment before the missile prod broke through the ceiling and tiles clattered down around him.
“Damn me,” grunted Wayne and then hunched down a bit. Lessening the extension of the Walker’s legs to get better clearance.
It’d slow him down to change the length of the legs, but it’d make it so he didn’t have to crouch just to move through this area.
Once he did so he got a good look at the room he was in.
It looked a lot like an office space.
A very large one that stretched out for what was easily a hundred feet or more.
Large enough that it was easily an entire business worth of work-stations in a single flat area.
A vast number of cubicles were laid out all over with monitors, chairs, printers, inboxes, a water cooler, and a number of other things that gave Wayne a sense of concern. This wasn’t just some random military facility.
There were likely people here who, while they were the opponent, they weren’t the enemy. Non-combatants had to be given a chance when possible.
Flipping to his speakers, Wayne hesitated a moment, then shook his head. He didn’t speak a word of Dashi but even trying in Confed was better then just clearing the room.
“This is Warrior Hesh,” Wayne began. “If you’re in this room hiding, step out to the side. I’m going to do something ugly and mean. You have ten seconds to comply.”
Lifting up the left arm Wayne counted down in his head to zero.
Once he hit zero, he began walking to the right, aiming his arm to the left, and moved through the cubicles. Stepping through the weak partitions while crushing a few things at the edge of the aisle.
Wayne was consciously avoiding computers as any of these could have information they’d need on them.
He had considered using his flame thrower, but an uncontrolled fire was the last thing he wanted in here. It’d possibly spread.
Instead, he kept a machine gun ready as he cleared the office in one direction.
Reaching the corner he walked along the wall that ran perpendicular to his original position. Looking for movement of any sort through the night vision.
Yet he found nothing.
There was no one and nothing but an empty office.
Despite the massive number of cubicles, there was no one here.
Making it to another door, Wyane pushed it open with his left arm. Tearing it clean off it’s hinges in a similar way that Cara had done.
With a rattle and clang the door hit the ground on the inside and Wayne saw what looked like a large break room and cafeteria. With a number of tables, benches, stools, chairs, and appliances.
There was also a mass of people all huddled in the back corner All of them pressed near to one another, furthest from the door, and staring at Wayne.
Hm.
I don’t have the ability to police them all.
I couldn’t do much of anything other than kill them all or barricade them in.
Let’s take a peak and see if there’s another door, which I doubt, and then go from there.
Wayne walked into the room, leaning down and shuffling through just as he did previously. Causing a number of those on the far side to make noise.
Squeals, moans, and even a few loud sobs.
Once he was through, Wayne slowly entered the room and looked around.
A white box unfolded itself on the far left.
In a flash Wayne grabbed Sidra, molded her into place, brought his machine-gun around, and fired. He only had to read the first few letters of the white box to know that it was a Yatuni anti-armor weapon.
Holding the trigger for a three second burst, Wayne hosed down seven or eight people that were around the white-box. They’d all been somewhat separate than the others and keeping to themselves.
Marking themselves out in a way that’d have invited curiosity if Wayne’s AI hadn’t told him there was an issue there.
After the burst-fire Wayne looked to the rest of the crowd, attempting to identify anything else that’d give him pause.
Everyone was screaming, shouting, pleading, shrieking, and crying now.
They hadn’t been able to see very much of him in the darkness, only hear him.
When he’d opened up with his machine gun they’d almost certainly seen all of him through the flash of gunfire. That there was a Walker in the cafteria, not an armed soldier, and that it’d just mowed people down.
Yet no more white boxes appeared.
Nor were there any other exits from here and no emergency escapes.
Exiting back into the office, Wayne picked up some large metal cabinets and started piling them into the doorway. He didn’t stop until it looked suitably impossible for the people inside to get out quickly.
Walking back out to the intersection, Wayne didn’t find Cara waiting for him.
Peering through the doorway she’d gone through, he saw that it was some sort of barracks. Wit a number of beds, cabinets, and recreation type areas. There was a doorway on the far side.
“Warrior, my search was a cafeteria. Anti-armor weapon discovered, eliminated, you?” Wayne asked.
“Extensive combat,” Cara answered through what sounded like grit teeth. “Many infantry. Killing and clearing. No damage, no injuries. I do not need assistance.”
Wayne heard no gunshots, but his external microphones may not have been sensitive enough to pick it up and transmit it to him.
When it came to Walkers of this size, there was always a concern with weight. A number of systems would be cheap or contractor-grade.
“I’m going to proceed with the mission,” Wayne stated, then moved through th edoor at the end of the hall.
Arsenic was depending on them to keep moving and take the facility. He wouldn’t be able to help Cara with hallway battles with infantry. Cara’s own Walker would take up most of the positional space.
That left him with pushing ahead.
Stepping through the door Wayne looked around.
He found a hardened security point in front of him.
It was visible through his night vision but no white boxes appeared.
Everything here lacked connectivity.
There were multiple red lines intersecting with him. They were all pointed down the hall he was in from the only location that he’d be able to traverse through.
Shit.
Lifting up both arms, Wayne unloaded his machine-guns. Letting his blue-lines line up to the starting point of the opposing red-lines. Stitching machine-gun fire across it as both guns roared to life and filled the hall with flashes.
Pushing to the side, Wayne stuck the back of his Walker to the left wall, bending his right arm across his chest to keep his aim on target while presenting as limited a target as possible.
All while holding so tightly to Sidra that Wayne felt like he was pushing himself beyond his limits. Beyond where he’d ever gone before and part of that was due to the simplicity of the Walker and it’s systems.
Where a Titan Walker had enough computational power that it needed an AI to manage it, a Scout Walker was more similar to a high end gaming computer system.
He was lacking in power he could leverage in a way he really didn’t like.
Laser rounds and heavy machine-gun fire that’d be strong enough to cause damage came back at him from the other side of the hall. A lot of it simply went past Wayne and into the corridor he’d come from.
Yet not all of it.
More than a few rounds connected with his left arm, left shoulder, or his right arm. Where he was in the center of the Walker was mostly shielded.
Most of the cockpit didn’t exist and was just a small viewing window of Steel-Glass, the rest of it was armor, sensors, and weapons. Using his shoulder to take hits was completely valid in this situation as the torso didn’t jut out that much further than the shoulder.
Working the machine-gun around, Wayne was able to get it to line up with the position that enemy fire had been coming from. Slowly bringing the number of red lines reaching out to him down to zero.
No sooner that it was done then Wayne cut his fire and then leaned back from the simple viewing port to look at his internal cockpit controls and sensors. He needed to know what’d all happened in that ugly little gunfight.
According to the display panel, his left shoulder armor no longer registered. Such a thing meant it was completely devoid of armor and no longer existed or the sensor had been blown out completely.
Either way it would make it hard to gauge how the Walker’s left arm was performing.
Lifting the left arm Wayne moved it in front of himself to test it’s range of motion.
Only to find the arm didn’t move at all.
With a shake of his head, and hating this, Wayne quickly popped open the front of the cock pit, then peeked to his left arm.
It was there, it was pointed at a weird angle, and the weapon was in place. It was mostly aimed forward but it wasn’t something that apparently was moving any further.
Pulling the cockpit shut Wayne gave the mental command to fire a single round from the left machine-gun after plotting out the blue line htat came from it.
It fired, which was good, but it couldn’t move at all.
Down an arm for aimed work.
Damn.
Moving along the wall, Wayne kept his right arm forward and had the barrel ready for anything that might appear.
As far as he could see though, everyone who had been manning the security point was downed.
Reaching the security point Wayne looked over the defenders.
They were all in odd uniforms that he couldn’t identify. The colors were primarily brown and green for a fairly basic camouflage pattern.
Prodding at a body here and there, Wayne found that they were all dead.
Each and every one.
Unfortunately Wayne’s semi-blind fire wasn’t as blind as he’d felt it was. In aiming for where the enemy fire was coming from he’d been able to annhilate them.
Moving past the corpses, Wayne started down the corridor. It took a sharp right, then a left that led into a small open space.
In that space was a mass number of gun emplacements on the walls along with some odd looking nozzles sticking out of the walls.
All were silent.
Not hesitating, Wayne hurried out of the small room and into the hall it led out into.
Only to see a heavy machine gun stuck in the wall in front of him.
The barrel’s opening was so large that Wayne couldn’t even guess the caliber of it.
Fucking anti-armor gun.
Only reason we’re doing as well is Arsenic knocked out all these automated defenses.
Turning to the left at the end of the hall Wayne found he was looking out into a strange open area. Something akin to an office space mixed with a control center or a ship’s command deck.
“The hell is this?” Wayne murmured to himself as his eye scanned the area. The security checkpoint he’d crossed had been nasty if there’d been power, but it also felt somewhat lackluster. Wayne was curious now at how Cara was doing.
If she was perhaps fighting a great deal more people than he thought.
“Warrior, how are you?” asked Wayne as he slowly moved deeper into the strange area.
It was easily thirty feet to the ceiling, monitors covered an entire wall, with multiple seats and computers spread out in every direction. There was a series of doors on one wall that would need to be cleared.
The area itself was on a strangely sloping floor that was akin to an audience hall, so everyone could see the monitors easily Wayne imagined.
On the opposite wall that had the three doors was another door.
Beside that doorway was a red placard that Wayne couldn’t read as it was in Dashi.
No translation appeared immediately either.
Going to that door Wayne confirmed this area was empty of everyone.
Reaching out to it, Wayne pushed it open with the right hand of his Walker then peered in without going through first. Just in case it was something he didn’t want to get first shot at him.
And jerked away.
Inside of the room was a large number of chairs with seatbelts. At least seventy or eighty of them.
In those seats were people.
A great number of people.
All of them hanging limply in the restraints as if they were sleeping and waiting for someone to come wake them. Not one of them was moving or twitching.
It gave Wayne the creeps.
The longer he looked at them, the less they seemed asleep or unconscious, and more that they were dead. That whatever was done to them had been against their will and unexpectedly.
No one would willingly sit down in a seat, put seat-belts on; just to be killed.
That’s just not… no.
I refuse to accept it.
“Hey!” Wayne called through his external speakers.
There was no response from the people.
Man, woman, young, old, they were all unmoving.
Non-breathing.
With a grimace, Wayne moved into the room by ducking through the doorway.
Moving up to the closest person Wayne pushed at them lightly with his right hand. The woman’s head lolled to the side and she went limp against the restraints.
She ended up face up, her eyes wide, staring up at Wayne.
Glassy eyed, her face was oddly red, and her chest didn’t move at all.
They were all dead.
Very dead.
“Lord,” Cara’s voice came through with a slight crackle. “I am still engaged in combat. The battle is going well. This is a multi story barracks. I have killed at least sixty soldiers. They were all of Dashi but none of them have the tools or weapons to stop me.
“I wish to continue. May I?”
“You may continue, Warrior, be careful though,” Wayne muttered and exited this tomb of a room. “I came across people setting up an anti-tank weapon in a cafeteria. Do not get over confident. Don’t get cocky.”
“Yes! Yes. I understand. Thank you for reigning in your Handfast,” answered Cara, followed by a heavy and slow breath. “Yes. I will be careful. Thank you.”
Wayne shook his head and then moved over to the other doors across the way.
This place was strange.
It didn’t make sense to him.
AN entire workforce of people beyond the security checkpoint. As well as a massive troop barracks.
Then more people past the security point but they’re all dead.
Things were not as they should be here.
Wayne walked up to the closest door and went to push it open.
At the same time the lights turned on again.
“Lord Cavalier, get to a computer,” Arsenic said immediately.
Hesitating only briefly to pull off the night vision goggles, Wayne turned away and moved to the closest computer. He saw that it had a dock that he could use.
Opening the cockpit fully, he stepped out of it as it squatted down. Pulling out one of the attack-sticks that Arsenic used to break into computers from a pocket Wayne jammed it in.
Not wanting to risk something stupid, he pulled two more of the five and popped them into other computers.
Then returned immediately to his Walker and got back into it. Sticking his head to the implant point as it closed up in front of him. The very last thing he wanted was getting caught outside of his armored shell.
Like a snail turned into a slug.
Or a turtle without a shell.
How about no.
Shaking his head, Wayne got comfortable and watched as the three computers booted up.